The agenda for next week’s Transport Committee meeting is online. Generally it’s a fairly light agenda, with the most interesting things likely to be presentations from Auckland Transport on the rail station upgrade program and on the final version of the Central Flagship Project bus changes. However, one of the items on the agenda (item 12, from page 7) relates to what appears to be yet another move from the government to screw over PT funding – this time by reducing NZTA’s funding assistance ratio (the level of their subsidy) for a variety of different activities they undertake, most notably for the funding of public transport infrastructure improvements and rail operations.
Here’s a summary of the item:
NZTA contributes to the funding of public transport infrastructure (though weirdly not rail infrastructure) and operations because the more people on PT the less congestion we have on our roads – benefiting the motorists that fund NZTA through their petrol taxes and road user charges. I undertook a fairly brief analysis of the cost-effectiveness of NZTA’s contribution to PT subsidies last year and found that for each dollar NZTA spends on PT funding in Auckland, it gets around $4.40 back. We can only dream of state highway projects with such a good cost-benefit ratio.
But it would seem that Steven Joyce wants to cut back NZTA’s funding of pretty much everything except his pet motorway projects, so the extent to which NZTA help fund public transport infrastructure and rail operations is going to be cut back. Other cut-backs are in areas that Joyce obviously also sees as low priority spending – road safety and transport planning:
So how much more will Auckland Council need to stump up, in order to counteract these cutbacks in NZTA funding? Fairly significant amounts of money:
One does wonder when Auckland Council will stop standing for all the nonsense that we’re seeing in government’s transport policy and start flexing its fairly considerable muscles. I know that Mayor Len Brown wants to keep a good relationship with key government ministers, and that’s completely understandable, but when the city’s transport vision gets slammed over and over again by government policy surely eventually the Council must start saying something. One also starts to think that for opposition parties at this coming election, adopting a “this government’s working against Auckland, we’ll work with Auckland” approach might be quite fruitful.
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This morning’s Herald (in probably it’s only ‘serious’ front page story this week) had the results of their latest political poll showing Labour has 4% more support in Auckland than in the country as a whole. Given the current large gap between National and Labour is certain to close the closer to the election, this relative strength in Auckland could become key. And there really isn’t a more Auckland issue than traffic. Maybe the government will wake up and start to realise this almost Muldoon like approach to road building (he built other things, but build them he did) is insane.
Meanwhile inside, more non law abiding citizens are targetted by our revenue grabbing council:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10735563
Possibly the Herald should list those crimes that are okay to break and also the times in which you are allowed to be caught for breaking them.
I saw that, and couldn’t help wondering whether the swing effect in Auckland might be underestimated by the polls. That is, if support for Labour is higher in Auckland than elsewhere, and in 2008 four Auckland seats (pretty sure it was four) swung from Labour to National by margins of < 2%, National could end up with fewer seats than the polls predict because they'll lose electorates. A change of four seats would drop National below 50% of Parliament based on that poll.
Now what we need is for Labour to stop playing the game as though they've already lost!
“A change of four seats would drop National below 50% of Parliament based on that poll.”
No it wouldn’t. A small shift to Labour in Auckland would cause them to pick up a few local seats, and lose the corresponding number of list seats. The most important number is the national percentage of the vote, and that is currently showing a swing from Labour to National.
A couple of days ago commenters here were getting excited about how a minor change to LTMA showed the government was “undemocratic”. One threatened a backlash at the election. But neither that story or this one have featured at all in Stuff. If the media don’t think that an issue is even worth reporting, then it isn’t going to be an election issue.
Obi, the first paragraph of this article in the Herald reads: “The poll gap between National and Labour narrowed by more than five percentage points in a month, a Herald-DigiPoll survey has found.”
How on earth is that consistent with a swing from Labour to National?
National’s support in the poll is still higher than their support at the last election. From the article you link: “If the results were translated to seats in the House, National would have 63 MPs in a Parliament of 123, giving it an outright majority.”
obi, if you read the article you’ll see that five months out from 2008 National were polling higher than they are now. They still only got 44% of the vote, and that was with a swing in their favour away from Labour.
If Labour can pull their collective head from their collective rectum and actually fight, we might watch Shon Key preside over a once-in-a-generation defeat of an incumbent government after a single term.
I think it’s pretty unlikely National won’t win the November election. However, if their vote in Auckland took a big dive – plus they lost key Auckland seats (Auckland Central, Maungakiekie, Waitakere) – it would send an interesting message about what Auckland thinks of the government’s attitude towards us.
Matt… Your example showing a swing from the opposition to the government during an election campaign isn’t good news for Labour. Sitting governments have advantages of incumbency. They have the ability to control the policy and news cycles. They are a known quantity with a record to stand on (which for most governments, including this one and the last one isn’t a bad record), rather than being something uncertain.
My understanding is that historically what happens in election campaigns is a generally tightening up of the race – no matter who’s in the lead.
obi, you didn’t get my point. National, who were the Opposition, were polling about 54% at this point in the 2008 election cycle. Their final result was 44%, and that was with a government that had become widely unpopular for various reasons. National are doing their damnedest to become unpopular, as witnessed by their dropping support (Labour aren’t just closing the gap by becoming more popular, National are also dropping supporters), which is precisely where Labour were at three years ago.
Six months ago, I was fairly sure that National had it all sewn up, even if I were loathe to admit defeat. Now, I’m not so sure. There’re still five months left until the election, and National can do a lot to screw themselves over.
The other wild card is the minor parties. Right now, Act’s looking like a two-MP party post-election, and that’s only if Banks manages to hold Epsom. That’s not certain. 44% National plus two Act MP’s doesn’t equal a government, especially when there’s an active campaign to eject Dunne in Oharui-Belmont – the Green candidate is telling people to vote watermelon, because the Labour candidate doesn’t need too many more votes to win the electorate – and the Maori Party’s future is uncertain.
admin, the problem with Auckland sending a message is that National don’t seem to give a toss. Their attitude towards Auckland through this whole term has been one of disdain and dismissal, and I see no reason to believe that the loss of three seats would change anything, especially if they were able to govern in coalition with Act and not need any other parties. Such a result would simply cement the arrogance of Joyce and English.
The only hope that Auckland has is a new government. Nothing else will save us from Joyce’s predations, and even if it did cause a change of heart on matters Megatropolis it would still leave him as the Minister of Trucks, desperately slashing funding for anything that’s not a motorway right through the rest of the country.
Oh thats classic:
“Mr Wood believes while it’s still legal for Auckland Transport to do so, it’s unethical for fines to be handed out during the earliest hours of the morning…….”
Presumably he would have been only too happy to receive the ticket at a reasonable hour, say 10am, just after breakfast….
Some reality check here – as far as I understand, the proposal regarding the FAR clearly states that a) it will not change the overall PT funding available via the GPS. i.e. while Council may have to stump up slightly more for project X, there will therefore be money available for project Z.
b) it also to my memory states that the changes will be phased in slowly over several years?
While I am all happy to believe the worst of Joyce when it comes to PT funding, this didn’t worry me as much when I read it closely.
Admittedly (sorry, just waking up here) re-reading the AT paper, I am now confused as to why AT is worried about a 14 million loss each year? As they say themselves, less funding, but for more projects? I guess to get the same pot share, they’d have to increase their transport budget… okay, that makes sense.